It was a hot, overly bright afternoon spent hurling rocks into the trickle of river that runs by our house—usually the only thing to do to avoid a slow buildup of murderous rage on these wretched holidays when three quarters of the country all goes on vacation at the same time.
“What’s that?” Taiki asked, causing me to look up from where I was relentlessly scanning the ground, eyes squinted against the furious light, in my eternal quest for the perfect skipping rock.
He crouched a half dozen meters away, peering at none other than a small collection of VHS tapes half buried in the sand.
I guess it was some kind teaching moment, explaining what they were to a kid who in all likelihood will barely remember what a DVD looks like by the time he’s a teenager, if imparting that sort of useless knowledge can be considered “teaching.”
“It’s how people watched movies a long time ago,” I explained. “Before computers.”
He took this in stride. Another piece of the mysterious, infinite before-time.
“Why are they here?” The labels had probably been gone for a decade, and the tapes were warped, filled with sand and water, their once-black, glossy surfaces turning grey with time. I wondered what stories they had once held. Godzilla movies, wedding films, FAX machine instructional videos, porn.
“Somebody probably filmed aliens landing in the mountains,” I explained, pointing to the mountains to the north of the city, thick with deciduous forest and bamboo. “And the aliens, or maybe the people helping them on Earth needed to cover it up, so they took the videos and dumped them in the river. Looks like it happened a long time ago, now. I wonder what happened to the people who made the tapes?” I added cryptically.
“Yeah. What happened to them?” Taiki repeated.
I shrugged. “I don’t know. That’s a good question. Hopefully the aliens took them with when they left, so they’re safe now.”
He nodded sagely. “Maybe so.”
He’s only four. I don’t know how much time I’ve got before he realizes he can’t actually see his stink lines in the mirror no matter how bright the room is, and he starts calling me on all the other shit I tell him, too. I’m going to have my fun while I can.